How to Disable Notification and Volume Sounds on Windows?

Several users have been reaching us with questions after being annoyed by the sounds produced by their Windows versions. Most users are trying to find a way to either disable the sound notifications completely or change them to a less annoying sound.

As you know, whenever an important action is performed, Windows is configured to provide audio feedback by default through notification sounds. We’re all familiar with sound notifications for common actions such as disconnecting/connecting a USB device, battery low alert, volume adjustment, calendar reminder and so on.

If you use Windows 10, you know that it comes with a new set of notifications – some are borrowed from Windows 8.1. But it’s the new additions that seem to annoy most users to the point where they decide to turn every system sound off.

How to Disable Notifications & System Sounds

If you’re easily annoyed and are looking for a way to turn off notifications & system sounds on your Windows computer, this article will help you do it. Down below, you’ll find a collection of different methods that will show you how to eliminate any Windows-generated sound and to keep your home or office sessions nice and quiet.

Follow the method that disables that sounds that you’re looking to get rid of and ignore any other method that isn’t applicable to your current situation. Let’s begin!

Method 1: Disabling Notification Sounds using the Settings app

Notification sounds are the newest addition to the fleet of Windows sounds and, by the looks of it, the most hated ones. Fortunately, there’s an easy and efficient way to disable sound for notifications using the Settings app. You can deactivate the sounds for all apps or you can target specific notifications that you don’t want to hear ever again.

The procedure of doing so is simple yet efficient. We have tested it successfully and it works flawlessly. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Press Windows key + R to open up a Run dialog box. Then, type “ms-settings:notifications” inside the text box and press Enter to open the Notifications & actions tab of the Settings app.
2. Once you’re inside the Notifications & actions tab, scroll down to Get Notifications from these senders.
3. Click on an app that you want to disable sound notifications for and then disable the toggle associated with Play a sound when a notification arrives from the AutoPlay menu.
4. If you have multiple apps with annoying sound notifications return to the Notifications & actions tab and repeat step 3 with a different app. Do this systematically until you disable the sound notification for every app that has the potential of bothering you.
5. Restart your computer and enjoy the peace and quiet.

If this method is not applicable to your current scenario or you also want to disable the sound notifications across the whole OS, move down to the next method below.

Method 2: Disabling Sound Notifications via Control Panel

If you’re looking for the practical approach that involves disabling every Windows notification sound, the easiest way to do so is to use the classic Control Panel Interface. But keep in mind that doing so means that you’ll probably miss some notifications altogether if you’re not paying attention to what’s happening on your screen.

Judging from user reports, this method seems to be the preferred approach when it comes to disabling sound notifications since it allows you to do it in bulk (without the need of disabling each notification individually).

Here’s a quick guide on disabling all sound notifications via Control Panel:

1. Press WIndows key + R to open up a Run dialog box. Then, type “control” inside the text box and press Enter to open up the classic Control Panel Interface.
2. Once you’re inside Control Panel, use the search function on the in the top-right corner of the screen to search for “sound” (Press Enter to initiate the search).
3. Next, from the search results, click on Change System Sounds.
4. From the Sound window, ensure that the Sounds tab is selected, then select Notifications from the list of sounds under Program Events.
5. With the Notification event selected, change the Sounds drop-down menu below to None and click Apply to save the configuration.
6. That’s it. Once you get this far, your notification sounds are already prevented from playing.

If you’re looking for a different approach like disabling the volume sound, move down to the next method below.

Method 3: Disabling the Default Volume sound on Windows 10

Several users have been searching for a way to disable the beep sound that Windows 10 makes when the user tries to adjust the volume. Weirdly enough, there are two different sounds that play at the same time (by default) when the user adjusts the volume slider upwards or downwards.

It’s hard to pinpoint what Microsoft tried to accomplish by allocating to different sounds to the volume slider since the two tend to mix up and produce a weird noise. Fortunately, there’s one quick fix that you can implement in order to remove the default sound volume. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Press Windows key + R to open up a Run dialog box. Then, type “mmsys.cpl” and press Enter to open up the Sound window.
2. Once you get there, make sure that the Sounds tab is selected.
3. Next, scroll down to Program Events and locate Default Beep from the list of sound events.
4. With the Default Beep sound selected, use the Sounds drop-down menu below to change it to None.
5. Click Apply o save the configuration, then try to adjust the volume. If you’ve done this correctly, you should no longer hear the annoying volume sound.